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With a bit of a twinkle in our eyes, my colleagues Brian James Kirk and Sean Blanda, today, we launch a small testament to our love for that city that lives in Philadelphia’s historic shadow: New York.

Today, we launch the 67th ward.

It’s not much now and probably won’t be in the future. Just a small landing page for a mentality.

Yes, it comes from that old New York Times trend story that chronicled — in a somewhat condescending tone — the young people from that city, particularly Brooklyn, who were migrating to old transitioning neighborhoods of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, the story suggested, was the ‘next borough’ so the ‘sixth borough.’

Gosh that just seemed stupid and so very representative of how difficult it is for most of us to take hold of the gravity of time. New York City was the engine of urban power in this country since the Second World War, with increasing dominance in the last 25 years, and that is quite indisputable.

But that city and its paper of record could certainly use a level of humility, particularly with regard to the once Workshop of the World. Particularly considering New York has won itself so much praise and acclaim that is just frankly played out. Cliche, my friends, runs deep in any sentence you utter about your travails there.

Philadelphia has the wonderful magic, grit and striking chance for recapturing that excited so many in so many corners of New York. So it made perfect sense to make clear who was in what place.

Historically and perhaps once again in the future, New York would be cast in its older brother’s shadow.

So in casual conversation, I started using the phrase to describe the cit to the north. Then I slipped it into a few Technically Philly stories, and we actually heard back from readers who got a kick out of it. So we used it more.

No anger here, I have nothing but love for the 67th ward.

Wards aren’t the teeniest political divisions in the city, but something about the ward system is the most Philadelphian.

Maybe it’s the ugly realities of street money and machine politics or perhaps the more beautiful aspects of a city still possessive of neighborhoods as divided and varied, different, troubled and tight-knit as the best and oldest cities always have been. Whatever the reason, it sure seems like Philadelphia has a lot to remind its neighbor 90 miles north along the Jersey Turnpike.

New York is going to get through all of this. It just needs to follow the lead of its older brother, Philadelphia, and its much maligned, corrupted and bureaucratic political ward system, fitting for both of our municipal histories.

The sidebar from Yahoo Pipes that replaces “New York” with “the 67th ward” in various news stories and a small passage is just a small landing page to convey that feeling.

Author, blogger and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis begins his Hypercamp on Nov. 11, 2009 at the College University of New York's graduate school of journalism.

Highly localized news and its intersection with profitable, sustainable news is already starting to dominate conversations about the future of news in the United States.

The numbers and business plans, relationships with each other and with legacy news organizations and who will be written into history for leading the movement seemed trending themes of the  New Business Models for (Local) News Hypercamp summit at the modern, sleek and sexy (read: expensive looking) midtown Manhattan home of the College University of New York’s graduate school of journalism.

Held two weeks ago today, the invite-only affair was blasted the world over by way of social media, notably a wildly active Twitter hashtag, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth sharing my experience at the Nov. 11 event.

Outside of the impressive digs and killer eats (breakfast, lunch and open bar with great nibbles to close!), the Hypercamp, a brainchild of Buzzmachine blogger and CUNY professor Jeff Jarvis, was unsurprisingly packed with about 150 big name players in the news future conversation, admittedly with an East Coast bias — damn near half the staff of the New York Times and a heavy presence from the Washington Post, Baltimore and New Jersey news outlets (Chris Krewson of the Inquirer, a philly.com executive and humbly Technically Philly held it down for Philadelphia).

The morning was devoted mostly to Jarvis and students showing off updated versions of their New Business Models for News, underwritten by the Knight Foundation and chock full of enough detail, estimation and exploration to be both decidedly important and wildly baseless.

Those numbers focused on for-profit entities of somewhat varying sizes, though many seemed unfulfilled by what was available, including folks interested in nonprofit roles.

“It’s a flag in the ground,” Jarvis said. See his slides here, or watch his morning presentation below, and, yes, see my fat head and Phillies cap on my knee in the bottom left of the screen.

After the morning discussions of these models — and quibbling over the CUNY team’s numbers — and a lunch break, three tracks gave attendees nearly a dozen sessions stuffed with high-profile panelists.

See the full schedule here.

SELLING, WEST COAST VS EAST COAST

Perhaps my favorite session was was on selling for the hyperlocal news site. That afternoon session was hosted by Greg Swanson, a crunchy Portland, Oregon sales executive with Prism, and Mel Taylor, an independent Philadelphia sales consultant with the look, feel and sound of a power seller. It was delightful to see our country’s coastal stereotypes personified so clearly — the aggressive, big East Coast city chap, tall, with perfect hair and a thousand-dollar suit standing beside the more reserved, earth-tone, sweater-wearing father figure.

There wasn’t enough time for either to really finish his presentations fully, but their tempos were set. While I felt both were directing their thoughts far more for established brands launching sites or someone with the chance to launch their product fulltime to start — say, a former newspaper reporter with a severance package to spare — I found value in both.

Swanson left me with two powerful take aways:

• ‘Unique visitors‘ is a broken metric — I already have beef with the unreliability and variables with Web metrics, but Swanson made this bigger still by highlighting just how the cookies-based unique visitor count are always inflated by newspaper dot coms, devaluing monthly page views and wrongly suggesting the loyalty of online readers.
• Localized coupons work — Using the example of Forkfly, Swanson caught the attention of others, by detailing how hyperlocal news sites could recoup business sponsorship support by using social media to push out coupons and other local business deals and bring value.

Taylor’s presentation, the slides from which can be seen below, was challengingly motivational to Swanson’s conversational.

Solid take aways from his truncated speech:

• News has always been about enabling commerce
• Talk in language your local businesses can understand when selling Web metrics
• Sell video commercials on your front page
• Sell 300 x 250 above scroll display ad
• Sell cheaper-sounding weekly rates, rather than monthly figure
• Host an advertiser seminar
  

OTHER PANELS AND CLOSE

Afterward, I dropped in on the Practicing Quality Journalism session, which was mostly just a conversation on new media best practices with innovative staffers from the New York Times, including David Carr. Interesting, but I remain confounded by anyone who seems to think that still notably international newspaper has any real business or precise lessons for bloggers, hyperlocal news sites or even traditional big metro dailies.

I also sat in on a Community Engagement and Marketing panel, hosted by Mary Ann Giodano, editor of New York Times Local news confab, and featuring one of her reporters, David Cohn of Spot.Us and Debbie Galant, the founder of baristanet.com — the kingpin of profitable, hyperlocal news site. I was interested in seeing Giodano, Galant and Cohn, the last of whom I was happy to have finally met in person, but found the subject matter mostly directed at those perhaps in a bit more of the beginning stages of promotion.

The final session was what Jarvis dubbed a ‘reverse panel,’ in which a handful of representatives from big-name news organizations listened to hand-wringing from bloggers about how they might better work together. What came out of it seemed that all agreed they should work together and communication was necessary, but both sides thought the other needed to do a better job of initiating that.

To close the day — before the open bar — Jarvis brought everyone back to CUNY’s newsroom to seek suggestions on what steps should be taken forward, what universities might build and how such events could be done better in the future.

I offered my interest in seeing more research in the world of metrics. I also would have liked to seen more dialogue about how hyperlocal startups — not backed by existing brands — can get from start to the rather optimistic numbers in traffic and profit that Jarvis’s group has estimated.

As this hyperlocal movement takes hold, we need serious education around the idea that more traffic doesn’t always mean more value for advertising, sponsorships and other partnerships.

That education will likely have to happen in a lot of ways, too, if news is to find foothold in profitable sustainability anytime soon.

This is a conversation I’ve had too many times.

I am in Washingto D.C. today, the day after Martin Luther King day, for the inauguration of Barack Obama. While I will have much more to say on that in coming days, being here reminded me of how often we in the mid-Atlantic take for granted what we have: five of the most influential cities in the country and among the more meaningful in the world.

All Americans have relative access to them, but the densest collection of our residents can visit Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore or Washington D.C. for the weekend.

While many like to point to the availability of train access between historic European cities, the age of Middle Eastern and Asian metropolises and the culture of South American and African urban centers, I can’t help but think there is something meaningful here.

The United States is the world’s greatest exporter of culture and five of our most powerful hubs are all within eight hours.

Do you take advantage of that? If you aren’t in the region or even the country, am I overselling what I have?

Boston

Why do I care?:
Population: 608,352
Size: 89.6 sq mi
Nickname: Beantown
Symbol:
Sports Teams: Celtics, Bruins, Red Sox, Patriots
Universities: Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern University, UMass-Boston
Famed Newspaper(s): Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Herald
Famed Corporation(s): Dunkin Donuts,
Famed Citizens: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg, John F. Kennedy Jr.
Phrases to help fake you’re a local: “I’m from Wahdatown Mass!”

New York

Why do I care?: U.S. Cultural Capital
Population: 8,274,527
Size: 468.9 sq mi
Nickname: Big Apple; City that Never Sleeps
Symbol: Statue of Liberty
Sports Teams: Yankees and Mets, Giants and Jets (in name), Knicks, Rangers
Universities: New York University, Columbia University, Fordham University, Fashion Institute
Famed Newspaper(s): New York Times, New York Post and New York Daily News and Village Voice
Famed Corporation(s): Dunkin Donuts,
Famed Citizens: Adam Sandler, Rudy Giuliani, Frank Sinatra, Norman Rockwell
Famed Music: Jay-Z, Billy Joel
Big Money: John D. Rockefeller
Food: Pizza, nuts, Italian ice
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

Philadelphia

Why do I care?: U.S. Historical Capital
Population: 1,449,634
Size: 135 sq mi
Nickname: City of Brotherly Love; Illadelph
Symbol: Liberty Bell
Sports Teams: Phillies, Eagles, Flyers and 76ers
Major Universities: University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and La Salle University
Famed Newspaper(s): Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Tribune
Famed Corporation(s): Comcast, QVC, Vanguard, Slinky
Famed Citizens: Bill Cosby, Bob Saget, Joe Fraizer, Tina Fey, Ben Franklin
Famed Music: The Roots; Hall & Oates; Paul Robeson; Beanie Sigel; Man Man; Dr. Dog; Jill Scott
Big Money: Stephen Girard
Food: Cheesesteaks, soft pretzels, water ice, Tastykakes
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

Baltimore

Why do I care?: History; National Aquarium
Population:637,455
Size: 80.8 sq mi
Nickname: Charm City
Symbol: Waterfront
Sports Teams: Ravens, Orioles,
Major Universities: University of Maryland, Loyola University
Famed Newspaper(s): Baltimore Sun
Famed Corporation(s):
Famed Citizens: Ray Lewis, Cal Ripken Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Frederick Douglass
Famed Music: Toni Braxton
Food: Crab cakes
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

Washington D.C.

Why do I care?: U.S. Political Capital
Population: 588,292
Size: 68.3 sq mi
Nickname:
Sports Teams: Redskins, Nationals, Wizards
Universities: George Washington University, American University and Howard University
Famed Newspaper(s): Washington Post and Washington Times
Famed Corporation(s):
Famed Citizens: “Sugar” Ray Leonard; Colin Powell;  Sojourner Truth
Famed Music: Marvin Gaye Duke Ellington
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

OK, plus, having grown up in New Jersey, I had to add the Garden State.

New Jersey

Why do I care?: U.S. Political Capital
Population: 8,685,920
Size: 8,729 sq mi
Nickname: Garden State
Sports Teams: Devils, Nets (for now); Jets and Giants (really!)
Major Universities: Rutgers University; The College of New Jersey and Montclair University
Famed Newspaper(s): Newark Star-Ledger
Famed Corporation(s): Wyeth and every other pharmaceutical company known to man
Famed Citizens: Jon Stewart
Famed Music: Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

So for those nearby appreciate being so near to so many distinct cultures. Those outside of it, let me know how excessive this all is.

What did I miss?

Ed Rendell and others at 2006 Pennsylvania Society dinner in New York City.

One of the largest and, admittedly, one of the many embarrassments of old Philadelphia is that the annual Pennsylvania Society dinner is held in midtown Manhattan.

It seems like a suggestion that Pennsylvania’s largest city – the city of firsts, the workshop of the world, the first great city of the United States – isn’t good enough. Or as Fred Anton, head of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association, told eminent Daily News columnist John Baer, Philly isn’t “exotic” enough.  His recent most column lambasted the 109-year-old celebration:

Cancel next month’s Pennsylvania Society weekend in New York City, or curtail it, or work on moving it to its home state.

In the worst economy since the Great Depression, with 1.2 million jobs lost this year, with state unemployment at 5.7 percent, the highest rate since right after Gov. Rendell took office in ’03, with the city facing job cuts and a $1 billion shortfall, it just strikes me as a tad unseemly to, you know, party hearty. [Source]

But, this deal is even more twisted than even Baer acknowledges, though I would like to take this opportunity to point out that I was once in a group photo with him.

People get in a tizzy each year about this even being in New York, particularly this year because the economy is bad, people are pointing fingers and guys like John Baer like to add to the fracas with widely read columns.

Check the society’s mission:

The Society is a non-profit, charitable organization with nearly two thousand members around the Commonwealth, the United States and the world.  It is not affiliated with any particular political party, business or profession.  Its purpose is to honor achievement, to reward excellence, to promote good will and understanding and to celebrate service to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and to humanity in general.

So, yeah, everyone says it sucks that a group that wants to “celebrate” anything to do with Pennsylvania wouldn’t hold its blowout even in Philly, or at least on a rotating basis between Philly and Pittsburgh – throw in Hershey for the midstate, folks.

Particularly in recent years, Philly has developed a high brow scene. I certainly haven’t seen it for myself, but I bet Philadelphia can show a good time to rich folks looking to spend big cash. If it’s more an excuse to get away from local media, well, I would think New York isn’t far enough with today’s Youtube generation.

Still, you know all of that.

Here’s what I think makes this situation even worse and should make anyone with half a heart want to bring this thing back to Philly – or Philly and elsewhere in Pennsylvania. The dinner has lost its roots in a troubling way.

From the Society’s own history page:

In 1899, an historian and native Pennsylvanian named James Barr Ferree, who was living in New York City, invited 55 fellow Pennsylvanians living in New York to join him for dinner at The Waldorf=Astoria Hotel.  While feasting on oysters and Delmonico steaks, they decided to form a group known initially as “The Pennsylvania Society of New York.”  Their goal was to establish a society “uniting all Pennsylvanians at home and away from home in bonds of friendship and devotion to their native or adopted state.”

They also decided to meet for dinner every year, same time, same place. This was the era when The Waldorf=Astoria still occupied the site where the Empire State Building would climb to the clouds thirty years later.

The following year in 1900, a young British journalist and Member of Parliament dropped in and regaled the diners with stories about his adventures in the Boer War in South Africa.  The young man’s name was Winston Churchill, and thus began a tradition of having a guest speaker of interest at the dinner. [Source]

OK, the last bit was just because it’s cool.

The first graf is what interests me. The Society’s very foundation was born out of a desire to celebrate the Pennsylvania diaspora. Some dude in New York who still repped the Keystone State wanted to show love.

Making it an annual slob fest in New York because some think it more “exotic” is even more an embarrassment. It went from Pa. pride to a Pa. getaway.

And, don’t misunderstand. This is a big event for power players, naturally many of them with rich ties to Philly. Last year’s event was seen as a big showcasing of mayoral contenders.

It can only be two ways. Rotate its location and feature prominently former Pennsylvanians or an even more sensible return to Pennsylvania. Blow the big cash in Philadelphia. Hell, there might be a casino soon, too.

Cross Country | Thurs. Aug. 9 to Aug. 23, 2007 | Mike Butler and Matt Sheehan

With two friends, I took a long-awaited trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic. See more here.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | Friday July 20 to July 22, 2007 | Father/Son Trip

New York State | Fri., Jun 8 to Jun 10, 2007 | Matt Sheehan and Jon Irmiter

Cooperstown and Buffalo

Niagara Falls

The Complete New Jersey | Friday, July 27 to July 29, 2007 | Matt Sheehan

Los Angeles, California | Friday, January 5 to January 10, 2007 | Matt Sheehan